


The Beast Who Was Eugenides

by uwugenides



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Canon Divergent, F/M, M/M, Monster fic, background eddis | helen/sophos, monster eugenides
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29851689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uwugenides/pseuds/uwugenides
Summary: The physical traits seen in the generational line of thieves who served the ruler of Eddis as thief were nothing more than genetic abnormalities. Any superstition ascribed to them and the thieves who bore them was nothing more than religion overreaching. The myth of Eugenides and how he became the first beast was a children's tale — right up until it was not.The thief of Eddis is a monster in both name and form, something he comes to understand better than he could have ever thought he would. Being a beast, however, does not make the thief any less of the man he is destined to be.
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	The Beast Who Was Eugenides

**Author's Note:**

> im so so so sorry for how horrible that summary is lmao. big thanks to my friend The_Big_Wee_Hag who beta'd this for me!

Eugenides and the Sky God’s Thunderbolts

> After her argument with her consort, the Sky, Earth gave Hephestia her power to shake the ground. The Sky had promised to give Hephestia his thunderbolts, but he delayed. He made excuses. He’d sent them to be cleaned; he’d loaned them to a friend; he’d forgotten them by the stream when he was hunting **.** Finally Hephestia went to her mother and asked what she should do, and the Earth sent for Eugenides.
> 
> Earth had promised that she would give no more gifts to him except those which she had given to all men. So she told Eugenides that he must use his own cleverness if he was to acquire the attributes of the gods. Cleverness was a gift she had given to all men, although to few had she given as much as to the woodcutter’s son. She told Eugenides that the Sky sometimes lay in the evening with one of the goddesses of the mountain lakes, and when he did, he left his thunderbolts beside him.
> 
> Eugenides first went home to his mother and asked for the moleskin blanket that had covered him as a baby. He took the blanket to Olcthemenes, the tailor, and asked him to make a suit from it, both a tunic and leggings, and Olcthemenes, the tailor, did. Then Eugenides went into the forest and begged from every thrush a single feather, and he took those to Olmia, the weaver, and asked her to make a feathered hat and Olmia, the weaver, did. Then Eugenides climbed the mountain lakes and he sat quietly in the cover of the trees and he waited for the Sky God to come.
> 
> When the Sky came to the lake in the late evening, he removed the thunderbolts from their shoulder harness, and he laid them down beside the lake. When all was quiet, Eugenides moved through the bushes with hardly a sound, but the lake heard him. She said, “What was that that moved in the bushes?” And the Sky looked, and he saw the shoulder of Eugenides’s tunic. He said, “Only a mole that sneaks through the twilight.” And Eugenides moved still more quietly, but still the lake heard him, and she said, “What was that that moves through the bushes?” and the Sky looked, but not carefully, and he saw the edge of Eugenides’s feathered hat, and he said, “Only the thrush that settles in the bushes to sleep.’’ And Eugenides moved still more quietly and not the lake nor the Sky heard a sound as he slipped away with the Sky’s thunderbolts and carried them across the top of the mountain.
> 
> It was dark when the Sky went to retrieve his thunderbolts and when he could not find them he thought at first they were mislaid and he searched all over the mountaintops and it was day before he knew that they were gone.
> 
> He saw Eugenides crossing the plain at the base of the mountain, and he stopped him and demanded his thunderbolts. Eugenides said he did not have them, and the Sky could see that this was true.
> 
> “Then tell me where they are,” the Sky demanded, but Eugenides refused.
> 
> “I will take you in my hands and twist you back into dust,” the Sky threatened, but Eugenides still refused. He knew the Sky could not hurt him without breaking his promise to Earth. The Sky threatened and Eugenides was frightened, but he would not yield until the Sky agreed he would give him whatever he asked if Eugenides would tell what he had done with the thunderbolts.
> 
> And Eugenides asked for a drink from the wellspring of immortality.
> 
> The Sky raged and Eugenides trembled but he stood his ground, because bravery was a gift that Earth had given to all men and to her son in full measure.
> 
> Finally the Sky went to the wellspring and fetched a chalice of water, but he laced it with coleus root before he gave it to Eugenides.
> 
> Eugenides told him where he had put the thunderbolts. “Look on my sister’s thrones in her hall where she will rule all lesser gods and you will see them.” Then he drank the water and tasted the bitterness of the coleus root, and his mouth twisted.
> 
> “In the water of life,” said the Sky, “the coleus will not harm you, but it will twist your form to reflect the creatures you so barbarically act like. It has made the water bitter as I will make your life bitter,” and he left.
> 
> While the Sky went to the Great Hall of the Gods to the throne of Hephestia in search of his thunderbolts, where he found them and Hephestia as well, Eugenides’s form was twisted as the Sky had said it would be.
> 
> Eugenides’s skin, which had been dark and smooth, sprouted fur, turning soft and fuzzy like that of a mole, mimicking the clothing he had used to hide from the lake and the Sky. Feathers sprouted from his head, covering his temples and hair so that they looked like the hat he had had Olmia make for him. His jaw contorted and his teeth sharpened into the pearly maw of a wolf. His hands curled into claws like the talons of a hawk. His eyes narrowed into the gaze of viper. A tail sprouted from his behind and wrapped itself around his leg which was cracking as the bones realigned themselves and he was forced onto the ground like a common beast.
> 
> When it was done, Eugenides looked nothing of himself any longer. The only remaining resemblance was in his eyes, which glimmered with the same cleverness Earth had given to him. She learned of what the Sky had done, and knew that he had not broken their promise explicitly, but still she was enraged. She looked to her son, twisted into a combination of her many creatures, and she told him, “I cannot undo what the Sky has done to you, but I can ease your life some. Like the Sun, who comes in the day and rests in the night, so will your form be.” And so it was.
> 
> Eugenides was made immortal and his body was returned to him each evening, but each day he spent as the beast that the Sky had made him into as punishment for his theft. 
> 
> The Sky did not retrieve his thunderbolts, as Hephestia had thanked her father for keeping his promise and the Sky could not protest. With those and the ability to shake the earth, Hephestia became the ruler of all gods except the first gods.

* * *

Eugenides didn’t think the story all that impressive. He had heard it near a million times and he could recite to anyone who asked, despite being only seven. He could tell it just as good as his grandpa or his mom, too. He knew that because all his cousins asked him to tell it. He loved when they would all gather around and listen with the most enraptured expressions. Plus, it was really funny because they always seemed to think the stories were real. At least, the kids younger than him did . . . and a few his age, and a few older than him, but they couldn’t help not being all that bright, so Eugenides did his best not to judge them.

Regardless, his grandfather insisted on retelling him the stories. Eugenides loved when his mother told him the stories of the gods. They would be crammed into his little bed, both under the covers, or up on the rooftops, watching the sun disappear behind the mountains, or sometimes they would find somewhere no one would ever look for them. Those were Eugenides’s favorite moments. In them it was just him and his mother — The rest of the world ceased to exist. He fit so perfectly on her lap, his ear pressed against her warm chest, her heartbeat keeping a steady rhythm along with his. Her hands would comb through his hair and she would look out at the view and smile, and it was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. She was always so full of joy and energy, yet when she told him the story, she was centered, she was present and immovable. Eugenides wanted to live in those moments forever.

_ Do you want to hear about the thunderbolts again?  _ she would ask. She always asked. She let him choose what story she told. He would nod more often than not and she would bundle him up closer in her arms, his head tucked under her chin like he was meant to fit nowhere else but there. Eugenides loved listening to his mother tell the story. It was always interesting when she told it.

When his grandfather told the story, Eugenides wanted to go deaf just so he wouldn’t have to listen. It was like one of his lessons, as if he were going to be tested on the materials later to see how closely he had paid attention. It was, to Eugenides, quite possibly the most boring thing in the world.

And yet, when his grandfather would reach the end and break out of his storytelling voice, leaning in towards Eugenides, and say, “And every thief since then has a bit of the beast inside of them. And, with Eugenides’s blessing, he will lend the power of the monster as it is needed,” Gen would smile back, showing off his gap toothed smile. That crooked little smile, with its eye-catching sharp little canine teeth, jutting out above all of the others. “Your teeth,” his grandfather would say, and patting Eugenides’s cheek, “my eyes—these are our gifts from our God. Do you understand?”

He did understand, just as much as he understood that their god did not exist, and he understood that he still much preferred being a thief than he did practicing his sword fighting with the other boys. He understood all of these things. His teeth were not a gift, they were a deformity. The muttered whispers he heard when people passed him by told him that easily enough. Same with his grandfather’s eyes; he slit pupils in the center of his golden irises were simply abnormalities. Neither were anything to be proud of, a message he had been told more times than he had the story of  _ Eugenides and the Sky God’s Thunderbolts.  _

After Eugenides’s cousin Omiris called him wolf-boy, though, he took great pride in the bite wound he had left in the boy’s forearm. After that, a lot of people had been greatly upset with him, and very few of them ever seemed to get over it. He still heard threats of being muzzled when he was being particularly unruly, even years later, but he knew now that they were unfounded. No one was going to treat him that barbarically.

* * *

The room was filled with people. They stood in a loose collection on either side of an open aisle. They were perfectly silent and none looked toward Eugenides as he entered. They had to have known he was there, but there was no acknowledgement. It was only as he moved further into the room, and could sense no movement but his own, that he understood that they were not people at all. They were statues.

Breath returned to Eugenides’s lungs and he steadied his shaking hand. These figures were no threat to him, merely the decoration be expected in a temple. He stepped closer to them and could see how their perfection made them unreal. Their skin was unblemished and did not blush, their faces symmetrical, their eyes always clear. There were no deformities to be found, no scars, no bent limbs, no squinted eyes.

There was one with curled black hair and fair skin, dressed in robes of ivory and blue, gold thread woven into it in the pattern of a rainstorm. She stood taller than Eugenides, which was not uncommon, but she was also taller than the magus. He almost reached to touch her skin which looked too soft to truly be stone, but he dared not. Instead, he caressed her robes with one hand.

In the back of the room, he found a woman draped in white peplos. He recognized her from his dreams, and it brought a smile to his face. Moira, recorder of men’s fates. She lacked her feather pen and scroll, but he would have known her anywhere. Eugenides was still admiring the goddess as he turned away from her, letting her linger in the edges of his vision. Looking to where the altar should have been, he found none

Where Eugenides had expected an altar, he found a throne, and sat atop it was none other than the Great Goddess herself, Hephestia. She was swathed in her robes of deep red velvet. Her hair was pulled out of her face with a woven ribbon of gold set with red rubies. On her lap was a tray, its mirrored surface reflecting both her impassive expression and the little round stone laid upon it. Eugenides stepped towards the goddess slowly, reaching one hand out to the stone. His fingers had nearly grasped it when he froze, his lungs laying leaden inside his chest. The front of Hephestia’s rich red robes had shifted with the lift and descent of breath.

The goddess was not a stone imitation among her replicated court. Sat in front of him was the Great Goddess Hephestia, and behind him Eugenides heard the rustle of fabric. He wondered if the soft sound he heard was the shift of the midnight blue gown as the goddess checked to see if he had left dirt on the pattern of golden rain. His extended hand was shaking by then, ignoring his efforts to be as still as the gods that surrounded him.

Eugenides closed his eyes, aware of the court watching his every move, and opened them again only as he breathed. He lifted his gaze just slightly to Hephestia and saw that she, unlike the rest, paid him no mind. Her eyes looked beyond him, impassive to his actions. It was clear she knew of his intent, she was simply unmoved by it.

The silence broke like the obsidian stone Eugenides had shattered to enter the room. There was a murmur of voices from further back in the room but no words were clear enough to understand. When a figure appeared in the corner of Eugenides’s vision he was not shocked. He waited and watched as it moved past him and to the right hand side of Hephestia. Standing in front of him now were the Great Goddess and her Thief. Eugenides had not noticed him earlier on, nor had he searched for him. Still, it was a surprise that he had so easily glanced past him, considering that the thief was the most unique figure in the room. His skin was not black like that of the Nimbians’. It was a deep brownish red, like a fired clay, like that of the ancient people who had left their portraits on the walls of the ruins on islands in the middle sea. His hair was dark, and unlike his half-sister, no auburn or gold was reflected in the light. Among the charcoal colored strands were feathers of brown and grey. They did not appear to be stuck into the god’s hair, appearing, rather, as if they grew straight from his scalp, smaller ones decorating his temple before bleeding into the hairline. His face was narrower, his nose sharper. His eyes were set deeply in his skull and where his round pupils should have been were the slits of a snake. He was smaller than the other gods, despite how fearsome he appeared, dressed in a tunic of plain gray.

“You have not yet offended the gods.” Eugenides, the god who had once been mortal, spoke at last. In his mouth there were teeth sharpened to unnatural points. “Except perhaps Aracthus, who was charged to let no thief enter here. Take the stone.”

Eugenides, who was mortal, did not move.

The patron of thieves came closer. He moved to his sister’s right hand and laid his own clawed one across it. A tail that better suited a lion wrapped itself around his leg, giving him all the composure of a large predator watching, with great leisure, an animal that he could devour at any moment.

“Take it,” he said. His words were strangely accented. This could have been from the malformed teeth, or perhaps from his forked tongue. The mortal Eugenides had had the same issue as a child. His father had sent him to practice his speech for hours at a time till his voice was hoarse. Beyond that, though, there was something familiar in the tone. The magus was not there to compare his accent to the modern language of the civilized world, so Eugenides was left to wonder. It was not that he could not understand the god’s instructions, but that rather that he simply could not move.

Eugenides realized that his nerve had failed him. He did not fear lightning bolts striking him down—no, it was an internalized sense of rules; religion that had seeped in during his childhood. His grandfather would have been proud to see that his stories had actually had an effect. He stared at the stone and felt as though taking it from the Great Goddess was a crime too great to contemplate. He could not do it.

Nor could he flee. Eugenides shocked himself with his own stubbornness, but he knew he could not leave without the Gift. It mattered too much. Distantly, he could hear the swish and rattle of small stones as the water began to flow down the riverbed overhead. Still, he remained as immobile as the gods he had mistaken for statues. Only his eyes moved as he looked from the small gray stone on the tray, to the hand of the god Eugenides, to his face. And then— because he thought that if he were dying, he might as well do something that very few had done since the world was madehe looked again into the eyes of the Great Goddess, and for a moment she looked back at him. That was enough.

Released from his paralysis, Eugenides leaned forward a little and plucked the stone off of the mirrored tray. Then he turned,and with the sound of water roaring in his ears, he ran for the staircase, through the ranks of gods, who watched impassively. He lifted his head only once to look for Moira, but she was hidden in the crowd.

When Eugenides reached the staircase, he jumped the first two steps and stumbled down the rest, completely unaware of how his limbs twisted beneath him, contorting to fit a new shape. He crashed into the wall across from the base of the stairs and dropped his lamp. He did not bother to pick it up. He had spent three nights in that maze and no longer felt any need for the guiding light. He moved close to the wall, able to feel the cool stone against his side. When the wall to his left ended, he turned left, then right, then right again.

The halls were brighter than he could ever remember them being, but he did not know nor care where the light was coming from. He turned left again, and splashed towards the doors he had wedged open. They had closed again. He imagined Aracthus somewhere making a gesture, forcing a little more water through the bluff to move his blocks. The god might yet succeed in trapping Eugenides. The water coming through the grille in the door washed against his legs and forearms, six inches deep. How many thieves, he wondered, had reached this point and still drowned? Would his bones end in the pool at the back of the maze? Would the obsidian door be restored and the Gift returned to its mirrored tray?

If he had taken the time to think of it, Eugenides would have remembered his tools, kept carefully in his pocket. He was not in the state of mind to be thinking of such things. Holding the stone between his teeth, he worked one talon after another into the lock and pried it open. The water beyond the door had been twelve inches deep when he started, and it reached nearly two feet before he reached the next door. He forced open yet another lock, then he stepped back to let the water rush through. By the time he came to the antechamber, the water came nearly to his chin, though he could have sworn that it should have been higher considering he was down on all fours. The waves made by the water thundering down in a solid pillar from a hole in the ceiling were tall enough to wash over his head, soaking him completely. The pillar carried a glint of the moonlight from above, but the chamber was as dark as the maze. Eugenides slid cautiously around, close to the walls, but he slipped at the top of the stair leading to the outer door. He slid down and under the water until he was pinned, unable to breathe, against the stone door.

Eugenides fought to turn over, to get some purchase in order to lift his head, but the river held him on his back, head down. He scrabbled with clawed hands but could find no leverage to move his body against the force of the water. The river foamed around him. He choked, running out of air and a darkness that was deeper than the river swallowed him up.

**Author's Note:**

> soooo chapter one is a bit slow, sorry for that, i definitely plan on picking up the pace and having things getting more intriguing. let me know what you think! also, come join the QT discord!  
> https://discord.gg/ZxNd8Cvh


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